v1.52 is a major upgrade to Civ IV and includes numerous optimizations for memory usage that should help performance on all machines but are tailored to especially improve performance on machines at or near the minimum specification.
Major changes include:
- Shared low-level graphics buffers
- Removed many unused fonts and reduced interface memory usgae
- Paged out units which are not visible
- Reduced terrain data size and overhead
- Reduced route data size
- Created a set of low-res movies for machines without dynamic texture support (this is a separate download)
These changes not only reduced the amount of system memory required, but lowered video memory usage extensively. Also, the rate at which the game consumes memory in the late-game has decreased, which is extremely important.
In addition, a new config file (ini) option called 'MemorySaver' has been added for further memory reduction, at the cost of alt-tabbing support. If you set MemorySaver=1 in the config file, you can lower your system memory usage by 70% of video memory. So if you have a 128MB video card, you can save an additional ~90MB of system memory. MemorySaver defaults to off, and is not officially recommended since it doesn't handle alt-tabbing and other cases of graphics device loss at this time. However, we recognize that some users may want to experiment with it.
Finally, the use of unofficial patches is not recommended and is largely redundant with the memory fixes in this patch. Unofficial patches may slow performance, cause graphical problems or conflict with Firaxis code resulting in crashes or other problems. It also makes it more difficult for us to respond to error reports and debug issues reported by users running unauthorized patches.
Suggestions for optimal performance:
- Increase AGP memory size in your BIOS settings to 128 or 256 if necessary.
- Go to
www.windowsupdate.com and apply updates
- Update graphics and sound drivers
- Close other background applications
- Turn graphics to low and use low-resolution textures in the options screen
- Turn off Antialiasing in your display properties
- Disable virus protection
